How Climate Café® in the community can be valued spaces for children and young people.
Having access to a Climate Café® benefited me massively in my journey being a young Climate activist. Climate Café® was a safe space for me where I could speak my mind free of judgement and I really felt listened to when it came to ideas and decision making.
My views and opinions were always valued and sought after within the Café despite being the mature age of 12 when I attended my first one.
Ruby making a film on climate action in her community in 2015
The intergenerational aspect of Climate Café® is an amazing thing as it allows a whole array of knowledge to be present at the conversation and has always proven to inspire more individuals to act as you hear such a wide variety of stories. I feel that it was especially beneficial for other members of the Café to listen to children and young people’s journeys as they were very refreshing and brought the conversation away from all the doom and gloom you can find yourself in and in most cases, they provided a very hopeful solution-based point of view.
As a young climate activist it can all feel very daunting, especially when your peers don’t have much interest in what you are doing, but Climate Café® meant that I had a support system behind me and made it much more achievable to act and see the effects of it. I was extremely lucky in that the members of my Climate Café® were always so keen to help me, and it felt like I had my own team of cheer leaders for every small achievement I would have. I hope this is the trend we see in all Climate Café® spaces!
Even when taking small steps I still felt as though I was making a big difference just from the supportive response. For example when I first began Climate Action I decided to write an article to my local newspaper asking everyone within my village to turn there electricity off for one hour of the day on one Sunday afternoon, although this felt like a really small ask and I was very unsure as to whether anyone would actually take this action, but I felt so supported by the team of people behind me that it further motivated me to take more actions and do more small steps until I felt comfortable to take bigger ones such as running my own climate youth group, being one of the youngest to be Climate Reality trained and then becoming a Climate Café® Director. I don’t think I would have dreamed of achieving any of these things without my initial backbone of support in the beginning!
In my Climate Café® some initiatives that were youth led display how important and beneficial it is to let children and young people take lead.
These were the following:
The Bunting Project: the bunting project was based on the idea of sharing something that you love and wouldn’t want to lose to the devastating impacts of climate change. We asked individuals in our community to design a flag of bunting using the #fortheloveof and stating what they love and what they wouldn’t want to lose. This really got people thinking about the severity of climate change and being grateful about what they had and what they potentially could lose if things do not change. We managed to get hundreds of people to make these bunting flags and the bunting then travelled to Paris for the Paris agreement and extended for COP 26.
Carrying on from this we decided that we could use the same idea but changed it to your wishes for the future and what you hope our future world could look like. Each person wrote their wish for the future on a ribbon and we tied it to a tree and called it The Wishing tree. It resulted in a very beautiful hopeful tree.
One final example of a youth led project from our Climate Café® is #CakesforCommuters.
#CakesforCommuters is to thank those who choose to take public transport. A group of us would go to the train station and bus stops and serve cakes to say thank you for choosing that form of transport.
Working together along side other members of my Climate Café® but still having that freedom to put our ideas at the forefront worked so well and is another reason why I feel that young people benefit so much from being involved in a Climate Café®; you can achieve so much more when working as a team and you can use each other’s strengths and backgrounds to create something well rounded and appealing to a variety of people out with the Café.
Copyright: Ruby F / Climate Café® 2024